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A transgender twist on Secrets

All-male cast lived the theme of a new play about black guys who keep it all inside.

Darren Anthony, far left, who wrote Secrets of a Black Boy, also has a role in the play along with, from left, Samson Brown, Shomari Downer, Eli Goree, DJ O-nonymous and Al St. Louis. It opens at The Music Hall on Friday. (Sept. 16, 2009) (LUCAS OLENIUK / TORONTO STAR)

By Ashante InfantryEntertainment Reporter

Sat., Sept. 19, 2009

Darren Anthony has always taken his big sister's lead, following her into social work, sketch comedy, acting and now playwriting. As it's said in their family: "Darren does what trey does."

He could do worse.

trey anthony is the creator of the award-winning `da Kink in My Hair, which was the first Canadian production staged at the Princess of Wales Theatre and has also been mounted in San Diego and London and adapted for television.

Now, she's producing Darren's first play, Secrets of a Black Boy, which opens at The Music Hall on Friday. With its focus on male angst and similar use of dramatic monologues, the show is being touted as "the male answer to `da Kink," which examined the lives of black women.

Forthright, plain-spoken trey also gets billing as dramaturge and contributing writer. "I'm the younger brother, so I do a lot of listening," says easygoing Darren of heeding her script suggestions: less cursing, and more vulnerable characters.

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But last spring, in the midst of one of the dramedy's early table reads, Darren would have been within his rights to wonder if trey had finally led him astray. He'd agreed with her and director Kimahli Powell to cast a transgender man, and not to inform the other actors until that individual was ready.

Now he was.

The all-male, all-black cast was about to learn that someone in their midst was born a woman.

Would this secret derail Secrets?

It began with a dare.

"Right after opening night of Kink at Mirvish (in January of 2005), Darren came up to me and said, `You should do a guys' version,'" recalls trey, 31. "I said `Why don't you do it?' I didn't think he'd step up; he had never written."

But the child and youth worker and burgeoning actor, who once thought he had a good NBA shot, was stirred to action by Kink's success. He presented trey with a rough script about a year later.

The pair, British-born of Jamaican parents, fleshed out the story of six buddies coming together for one last domino game at a neighbourhood community centre slated for closure. trey respected the authenticity of Darren's provocative dialogue around topics such as interracial dating, police harassment, domestic violence, illiteracy, fatherhood, infidelity and marriage, but insisted he push past the bravado to "bring more softness and sensitivity" to the subjects.

They also clashed over Darren's refusal to clarify the sexuality of a presumably gay character. "This topic is hard to talk about in my community and I want to present it subtly," says Darren, who also has an acting role in Secrets.

Workshopped at Harbourfront Centre in 2007, Secrets outsold two post-Kink female-centric productions trey premiered the same week. "I thought women wanted to hear about other women," she says of the surprise trumping, "but I underestimated how much straight black women, especially, wanted to hear black men talk."

Biscuit was the last role cast in Secrets.

He's the youngest character; a troubled, homophobic teen imbued with the pant-sagging glibness and fury that usually indicates a skewed idea of manhood.

The part is being played by Samson Brown, who trey knew as a butchy female poet always nagging her for a role – and who happened to be in the process of becoming a man by the time Secrets auditions were being held.

Raised in northwest Toronto, the only child of a single South African community activist mother, the soft-spoken, young-looking Brown is a high-school dropout with wisdom borne of identity issues and domestic drama.

"He has this smile, the swag and the innocence; the character was him," says Darren of selecting Brown from more than a dozen prospective Biscuits.

Darren, trey and director Powell then had to decide how to handle Brown's evolving gender, both in and out of the company; well-known as a spoken word artist in the black queer community, word of his unique inclusion in Secrets would eventually filter out.

What if the subject of his transition came up during an interview with the mainstream press? How would the other cast members feel if they learned of it elsewhere? Was Brown, still regarded as a tomboy by some relatives, ready for that kind of exposure?

"The thing I need most in a rehearsal hall is trust," says Powell. "Is this actor joining the cast going to potentially complicate this cast? What does it mean that there is this ... secret?' I was hopeful that Samson would eventually feel comfortable disclosing to the other actors."

Darren was nervous about Brown's participation. "I didn't want Samson's story to be bigger than Secrets. I didn't want the audience to lose focus," he explains. "And I felt for how emotional this would be for him, facing the media and his (extended) family."

Uneasily, they left it to Brown to decide when and whom to tell.

"What the f---? Are you for real? That, by his own recollection, was fellow actor Al St. Louis' response to Brown's brief, matter-of-fact "I was born a woman" declaration.

It occurred at the third or fourth Secrets ensemble read, one afternoon inside the rehearsal space at trey's Queen St. W. offices. Brown, unsure of how a new course of testosterone might affect his appearance and mood, figured it was time to inform the cast.

"Based on what I already knew about black men, I naturally assumed they wouldn't be okay with it, especially if they listened to dance hall reggae or were raised in religious households," he says.

After he spoke, one actor "jumped up like `Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!' and started pacing around the table," trey recalls. "I'm thinking `Oh God, this is not going to be good.'"

Others were silent. Some looked uncomfortable. In the Q&A that ensued, Brown evenly and honestly handled queries, such as: "Do you think as a man or a woman? You can have kids? Do you have sex with men or women? You don't stand up and pee?"

"I asked for paper and I started writing," remembers spoken word artist St. Louis, the eldest cast member. "I'd been around gay people, but this was a new experience for me. I wanted to get into the mind of this."

The word "transgender" was not in the vocabulary of Scarborough's Shomari Downer, 26, who calls Brown "a brave individual" for making the disclosure.

After an hour-long discussion, the cast thanked Brown for sharing, and got back to business – as Darren had hoped they would.

Behind the scenes of a play about gender and secrets, a secret about gender turned out not to be a big deal.

But try asking these guys for their ages: most of them – even the director – refused to tell. Talk about keeping secrets.

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